


January, 1991

by Renne



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Headcanon, M/M, mcu - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-25
Updated: 2012-10-25
Packaged: 2017-11-17 00:41:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/545622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Renne/pseuds/Renne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four months before Tony inherits his company, Operation Desert Storm begins and Rhodey's flying sorties over a war zone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	January, 1991

There was Obie, who was teaching Tony everything he knew about running Stark Industries, and Tony, who was smart enough that he’d learned everything already and was champing at the bit to turn 21 and take over his birthright. And then there was James Rhodes—Rhodey—Tony’s only true friend, flying missions over a war zone in the Middle-East because Saddam had tried annex Kuwait and claim the Kuwaiti oil fields as his own.   
  
And then there was the news Tony had never thought he’d hear; that he shouldn’t have heard, except he was bored peddling time and he’d exploited a back door into the DoD, breaking a dozen federal laws to jack into AO transmissions.   
  
Rhodey’s F-15 had been shot down over the Iraqi border by anti-aircraft fire.   
  
It’s not the first time Tony’s skipped out on Obie, but it’s the first time he’s been caught, and the whole story comes out in Tony’s desperation to do something for his friend. He knows he can’t go there, even if it is his first instinct, just as he knows if he went there’d not be a lot he could do. Obie assures him Rhodey is okay, himself kept abreast of the situation via his own contacts in the DoD; Rhodey had been recovered almost immediately, they said, only lightly wounded, and was recuperating aboard a aircraft carrier in the Gulf.  
  
It’s not enough for Tony, though, just to know Rhodey’s okay. He’s frantic as he buries himself in a pile of paper, churning out schematics for satellites and planes and missiles that will keep Rhodey safe. Even when Rhodey had deployed to the Gulf as war was declared, even as Iraq launched retaliatory strikes on Israel to force a full scale war, Tony had never though of Rhodey as unsafe. He was an ace, the best. Untouchable.   
  
Except now. And now, Tony knew, he had to protect Rhodey the way only he could.   
  
(In the background Obie smiles.)


End file.
